Jung Stripped Bare

Book excerpt: How many "posthumous" lives does a man have to live? Nearly half a century after his death, C. G. Jung is a subject of continual controversies. Every few years, a new life of Jung appears, each promising to provide the missing master key to the mysteries of his life and work, and to lay bare their secrets. However, with every successive "life", Jung becomes shrouded in an ever-increasing web of rumour, gossip, innuendo and fantasy. We may ask why Jung biographies are so filled with shortcomings? How did Jung become a fiction? This book addresses these issues. It demonstrates the pitfalls and fallacies of such works, and sets out how his life and work should be approached on a historical basis, drawing on decades of archival investigation and new documentation. It surveys attempts to write Jung's biography from during his own lifetime until the present; shows how Memories, Dreams, Reflections came to be falsely perceived as his autobiography; and why his Collected Works was never completed. Thus this work lays out an agenda for future studies and discussions of Jung, the reception of his work and its impact on contemporary culture.